Nick sat up suddenly. “What does that mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like,” I told him. “You tried to kill me in broad daylight, and your familiars wrecked my truck. I don’t like you, Nick, and somehow I don’t think you’re going to pay for a new truck. Add on top of that the fact that I’d prefer to keep you quiet about the jinn, and you’re in a tight spot.”
You just confirmed you have my ring, Maggie sniffed. I hope you’re going somewhere good with this.
Hang in there with me.
Nick looked toward the door. “All I have to do is scream.”
I laughed. “You think I’d kill you in person?” I made a show of twirling Maggie’s ring. “Nah. I’ll give you twenty-four hours to come up with something good to tell me, and then…” I shrugged.
Nick swallowed.
He’s doing that thing where he looks more like a stupid, scared teenager than a powerful necromancer, Maggie said. Almost makes me feel bad. You are aware that I can’t actually kill him like that, right?
He doesn’t have to know I’m bluffing, I told her. I patted Nick on the shoulder and knocked on the door. “I’m done,” I told the suppression team outside.
I found Justin at his cubicle, answering emails. He didn’t look up as I leaned over the cubicle wall and took a peanut butter cup out of the little jar by his keyboard. “Get anything out of the kid?” he asked me.
“Nothing. He claims that he made a vow of silence to his employer. Which could mean all sorts of things, but I’m inclined to believe him.”
“Should I go ahead and just send him to New York?” Justin asked.
I took another peanut butter cup and tapped it on the top of Justin’s monitor thoughtfully. “No. Keep him around. He’ll probably ask for a phone call soon. When he does, tap the line and let me know who he calls.”
“I’m not sure if I’m allowed to do that,” Justin said, finally looking up from his computer.
“Not sure, or definitely not allowed?”
“Not sure.”
“Better to ask forgiveness than permission,” I said with a smile.
He rolled his eyes. “You realize that you’re buying, like, the next ten weeks’ worth of drinks, right?”
“Now, now, let’s talk price once we’ve actually found out who’s trying to have me killed.”
I said goodbye and headed back to my rental, where I took a few moments to close my eyes in the quiet darkness of the parking garage. I could feel Maggie pacing around in the back of my head. I had almost fallen asleep when she spoke. Scaring him into calling his employer is clever.
Glad you think so.
If it works. He’s a smart kid.
True, but most people think that OtherOps are like cops and won’t bug your phones or detain you without reason and bullshit like that.
Aren’t you afraid that he’ll just tell his handlers what he was after? Magicians really like getting their hands on magical baubles, and I bet that one in the OtherOps office wouldn’t hesitate to confiscate me.
You can’t be confiscated without killing me.
You think that would stop her? Magicians are amoral twats.
I sighed. It was an alarming suggestion, to be sure, and I hoped I was as clever as I liked to think I was. He’s under a vow of silence. He literally can’t tell anyone about the ring. I hope, I added in a thought Maggie couldn’t hear.
There was a pause. Okay, I’ll give you credit for that one.
Thanks, I said. I was a little worried that I had tipped my hand about the ring so easily. He knew it was on my finger now, which meant if he managed to escape he could just kill me from a distance and take the damn thing. I had a thought while we were in there. Stop me if this sounds ridiculous.
Go for it.
Back at the cemetery, you mentioned how draugr can become shapeshifters as they become more powerful.
Yeah.
On Ferryman’s case, could we be dealing with a shapeshifter?
We already ruled out werewolves and wendigos.
No, I said, not a man who can become a creature – a genuine shapeshifter.
Maggie seemed to consider the idea. Why do you say that?
Because it’s the only thing I can think of that checks all the boxes: shapeshifters, like undead, are hard to identify with sorcery. OtherOps didn’t have a ready ID on whatever killed those imps. And everything I’ve heard about shapeshifters is that the constant switching between manifestations leaves them unhinged, which you have to be to move in on Ferryman’s turf.
Huh, she responded. I buy it. But there’s over a hundred varieties of shapeshifter out there, and they’re all stupidly rare. What are we looking for?
No idea. But I have another idea.
Yeah?
It’s really stupid.
Oh, no.
I shook the sleep out of my head and started the car. I’m going to poke it with a stick until it decides to come out and play.
Chapter 12
The first thing I did was make a phone call to Zeke. The retired cherubim picked up on the fifth ring, answering with a groggy, “Hello.”
“Morning, Zeke. I need you to do something for me.”
“Alek? What time is it? It’s… oh, Christ, it’s nine in the morning. Call me back in three hours.”
“If you hang up,” I said pleasantly, “I’m going to drive down there and kick the shit out of you.”
That seemed to wake him up. His voice sobered instantly – cautious, with a dangerous inflection to it. Not a lot of people threaten angels, retired or not. “What’s going on, Alek?” he demanded.
I held the phone with my shoulder and ordered breakfast at a Chick-fil-A drive-through. “You still there?” I asked him.
“Yes, I’m still here. What do you want?”
“I want the address of every imp meth house in northeast Ohio.”
There was a long, pregnant pause. I could just imagine the confused look on Zeke’s face as he processed the request. “If I had that kind of information, it wouldn’t come cheap,” he finally said.
“I’m pretty sure you do have that kind of information,” I retorted, “and you’re going to give it to me for free, or you’re never going to get work from me or anyone at Valkyrie Collections ever again.”
“Whoa, whoa! What’s gotten into you, man? Why the hell would you say something like that?”
I let my exhaustion and irritation bleed into my voice. After being stonewalled by a teenage necromancer, I didn’t have patience for Zeke. “Because you sold me to that necromancer.”
Another pause. “I, uh, don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“He told me it was you, twit. His draugr almost killed me twice, and they smashed up my truck. I’m driving around in a goddamn rented Prius and I’m pretty pissed off about it, so if you want to remain my go-to guy when Ada’s looking to spread around the bribe money, you’re going to get me those address.”
“I might be able to dig something up by next week.”
“You’ve got twenty minutes,” I said. “Ticktock.” I hung up and pulled into a parking spot, where I ate my breakfast slowly and downed four cups of fast-food coffee. I’d just finished picking the crumbs off my shirt when my phone buzzed. It was an email from Zeke, and it contained eight different addresses and a note at the bottom that said, This is Kappie’s territory. If he catches you snooping around, I had nothing to do with this. I made a quick mental map of the addresses, working clockwise around Cleveland, and typed the first address into my GPS.